Stjepan Rajko

Papers

Total Citations

148

H-Index

About

Stjepan Rajko is a leading researcher in robotics and autonomous systems, with a primary focus on pursuit-evasion problems and sensor-based motion planning. His work addresses fundamental challenges in how robots can locate unpredictable moving targets in unknown environments without relying on pre-existing maps. Rajko’s most influential contribution, the 2004 paper "Visibility-Based Pursuit-Evasion in an Unknown Planar Environment" (104 citations), pioneered a minimalist approach where a point pursuer robot must guarantee target detection using only local visibility information. Building on this, his 2002 "A pursuit-evasion BUG algorithm" (44 citations) introduced a complete, provably correct strategy for robots with imperfect navigation capabilities to search for moving targets in unknown spaces. This work is notable for its theoretical rigor and practical relevance to search-and-rescue, surveillance, and autonomous exploration. Rajko’s algorithms are distinguished by their elegance—achieving guaranteed performance with minimal sensing and computational requirements—making them foundational for modern robotics research in adversarial environments. His contributions continue to influence the design of robust, map-free navigation systems.